Hi all. I wouldnt say i'm a beginner but not quite amateur. I have bought plenty of books that have given me some good information. (Gus Hansen every hand revealed, Harrington on hold'em vol. 1, Daniel Negreanu's power hold'em, The little green book.) I have read each one and went and highlighted what i thought was good information and common knowledge in all the books.
I play a lot of casino 1/2 cash games. I have found success about 50/50. The tables are almost always full with 9 people and there is no standard x3 the bb raise or a certain amount people like to bet "X times the bb" From the way i see things. 15$ is the standard as if it was x3 the BB. I usually enter with a 200$ stack and watch the table for about 20 minutes when debating where i would want to sit. So im not to sit in the middle of aggressive players with stacks larger then my own. Buy in limit is 300$.
I have been playing to find a way to play against this. I tend to watch whose who at the table. I find out whose the aggressive group and who could be called a conservative player. Typically I will find a few people with stacks well over 500$. I tend to play the cards pretty legit. I try to play the player and not the cards.
The problem is however, with most hands even a 15$ raise from an early position with have about 4 other callers with it. Which seems nice but its hard to get into that action and steal a pot or "play the player" when i have 4 other people to battle through. Flops that generally are crap and dont have any straight or flush draws i will try to raise to knock one or two people out but usually get 2 callers. Turn card well they will check and i need to assume with a 9 handed table and 4 callers someone should have that top pair right?
I am having a hard time trying to find ways to be a solid player at a table like this. I tried today to play more aggressive and win more pots. Since you will see the more aggressive players be the ones more successful at poker. Being conservative can only get you so far.
Heres a hand that busted me tonight. Maybe someone can help me out.
PRE-FLOP: I was the button in a 9 handed table and i had 3 limpers then on me. I don't look at my cards until its my turn to act hoping to find who is REALLY interested on what im going to do. The players on the blinds are conservative so i think i could get them out with a nice raise and the limpers havent shown to much strength in previous hands tending to fold with a nice placed bet. They both try to limp and in position i raise it up to 15$ hoping to maybe get one caller and be able to beat him later in the hand since i felt i was the superior player here. One limper folds one calls. (PERFECT)
Flop Flop comes up 7,7,3. no flush draws. The limper Bets outright at 15$ I raise it 30$ to get a good feel for whats to come. I didnt put him on to much thinking maybe he had overcards and i thought if i gave off the presence of holding something strong he would back down. He just smooth calls and onto the turn!
Turn 9 of clubs. No help to a flush. Maybe a straight but i didnt put him on that. This time he doesn't bet first and checks it to me. Now i have seen him do this in the past and i took it as a sign of weakness. The only way i could make a value bet was putting the rest of my stack in the middle. Just betting a little bit would give him correct pot odds to call whether he had something or not. I go all-in for an addition 87 or so. He ponders it, counting it out then thinking about it. Suddenly, he moves it in. I was shocked. Could he have been slow playing the 7's?!?! We turn over and he hit the 3. He had 3,8 offsuit. Maybe he had a read on me but i still think thats a tough call to make. I dunno. Was he not even keen enough to think over pair? Or the 7?? What if i had the 3 and more than a 8 kicker. The river didnt matter as he took down the pot.
I find that if i play conservative at these tables the aggressive players will push you around whether you got a hand or not. Even having a nice hand we all know you only have a 30% shot at hitting the flop. At a nine handed table how do you play aggressive while being safe? I thought i had an accurate read on my opponent and tried making a vlue bet in which i thought he would fold since i have seen him fold many times before.
How do you guys play these types of tables and is there a style of playing these tables i just dont know about? What have you all found successful?
Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this as i tried to make this as accurate as i could.
on the button with only 2 limpers on a 9 handed table. In that position to me, you raise with anything really. You want to take the pot. I could have just limped with the rest and tried to take it on the flop but i wanted to maybe get one limper out of the way to make the odds of him missing that much better for me. I was going off of him hitting the flop only 30% of the time and with a flop like 7,7,3. I figured i was in a good position.
